The House of Representatives passed a rule to bring a massive 10-year budget framework—known as the one big, beautiful bll—to the floor, as Republican leadership attempts to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature by Independence Day.
The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and provide funding for border security and defense.
The rule, which required only a simple majority in the House to pass, passed 219-213.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., decided to bring the bill to the floor a day after its passage in the Senate despite sharp criticism of it from House fiscal hawks, who argued that it must be amended in order to address Senate changes they saw as backsliding from conservative priorities.
Centrist Republicans were also a worry, as Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., had already threatened to vote against any Senate-designed bill that more aggressively restructured Medicaid than the House’s framework.
The vote followed an entire day of congressional gridlock.
Earlier Wednesday, it came to light that the House Rules Committee made an error in drafting a rule to bring the bill to the floor.
Members of the Rules Committee neglected “to order the previous question” and restrict “intervening motions.”
More simply put, that means that if Republicans did not end up having the necessary votes when deciding on final passage, they would not be able to delay the vote.
As House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., explained Wednesday, that means the GOP leadership would not “have an escape hatch if they start it and realize they don’t have the votes.”
This vote stayed open from 2:15 to 9:30 PM, when it was ultimately passed unanimously by Republicans—making it the longest recorded House vote ever.
It was a day of uncertainty, as the House Freedom Caucus circulated a memo alleging that the Senate’s version of the bill “gutted House spending cuts and added new spending to the tune of more than $400 billion.”
While the vote remained open, House leadership and White House staff spoke with House Freedom Caucus members who criticized the Senate’s version of the bill for its higher projected deficit levels.
Shortly after 8 P.M. Eastern, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told reporters that he and his fellow Freedom Caucus members would not be voting on a rule that night. Norman ultimately voted “yes” on the rule.
“We’re advising not to put the rule vote up tonight,” he said. “Don’t keep the staff there… Freedom Caucus isn’t going to vote tonight.”
But shortly afterwards, Trump took to the social media platform X and called for a vote on the bill Wednesday night.
“It looks like the House is ready to vote tonight,” he said. “We had GREAT conversations all day, and the Republican House Majority is UNITED, for the Good of our Country, delivering the Biggest Tax Cuts in History and MASSIVE Growth.”
In an apparent attempt to call the holdouts’ bluff, leadership called the 9:30 vote on the rule.
Watching as some Republicans initially voted against the rule, before several of them changing their vote, Vice President JD Vance wrote on X, “The Big Beautiful Bill gives the president the resources and the power to undo the Biden border invasion. It must pass.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who voted down the bill in the Senate, threw fuel on the fire by saying he would welcome a more fiscally conservative bill from the House.
“Spoke today with House Conservatives, encouraging them to add ‘real savings’ to Big Not So Beautiful Bill. Reaffirmed that I can vote to allow a larger increase in debt ceiling if House attaches immediate REAL spending cuts,” he wrote on X.
